PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

[tphuang]

I think of the 09-IIIB/09-V as analogous to the 052D(L)/055. The 052D(L) is a competitive destroyer that inherited some limitations from its hull form and lineage, but it's still a thoroughly modern destroyer (AESA radars, UVLS, decent powerplant, etc.) The 055 I would say without hesitation is the most advanced and most capable destroyer in service anywhere in the world - monstrously powerful and sophisticated radar, wholly modern hull form with massive room for expansion, stupefying amounts of power from its engines, etc. Better yet is its future proofing for advances like IEPS and DEW/railguns, something the 052D has no hope of achieving.

I know I'm out on a limb here and most respected users think differently, but I think the analogy is nearly perfect. I expect the 09-IIIB to be China's first truly modern, competitive submarine that can hang in there but gives up a bit to the world leaders in the field. This means that we'll see production in numbers on this class if my view is correct, which is supported by the construction and expansion at Bohai. The 09-IIIB should be able to hold the fort for the near-to-medium term, even if it still isn't the PLAN's dream SSN.

not physically possible. It's too small. I'd be very disappointed if they we do not see 095 launched by 2025/26 timeframe.

The 09-V, whenever it emerges, I expect to be a wholly different story. If it's not a leader in SSNs, it's the leader. If this stretches credulity, think back to how Chinese surface shipbuilding looked 5-10 years before the Type 055 emerged.

Strategic platforms are where China is at the biggest disadvantage to US. Think nuclear arsenal, nuclear carriers, nuclear submarines and strategic bombers. 095 will not be the leader. It would however be China's first real quiet nuclear sub.

There's a difference between the damage a cruise missile can do to a slab of concrete and the damage it can do to the sensitive equipment in a shipyard (or even a semiconductor fab if we expand the target portfolio). The former can be repaired for a few tens of thousands of dollars, the latter can run up to the billions; let alone how much time it would take to replace the one relative to the other.

I wish it was as simple as you depict it, but there's still enormous damage the US can do with even a handful of conventionally armed cruise missiles.

I'm not sure why semiconductor fab is mentioned here since CETC fabs would be well inland. Which equipment in shipyard do you think China cannot repair in short time or bring over a replacement or move to another part of the shipyard? The part that is most precious in a shipyard is also likely the part that will be most well defended by CIWS. With even 1000 tomahawks launched against various military bases, missile launchers, command centers and shipyards, China will not suffer that much degradation in conventional warfare.

As long as China has large number of stealth aircraft and bombers and hypersonic anti-ship missiles, it will be able to keep US forces at a certain distance away. That limits the amount missiles that USAF/USN would be able to launch.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Hitting forces in the field and their bases is less escalatory than homelands, may have greater effect to preserve Chinese MIC infrastructure, and is the internationally accepted policy of France and Russia.

If their field forces are sunk, and there's still a huge strategic arsenal in reserve in case they want to flip the board, it'll be in their interest to accept getting an unequal treaty forced down their throat, which actually only undoes their own unequal treaties forced down the throats of others.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

not physically possible. It's too small. I'd be very disappointed if they we do not see 095 launched by 2025/26 timeframe.

How so? Both the Improved LA and Virginia Blocks I-IV have very similar dimensions to the 09-III. We might argue single vs. double hulled, but we don't know if the improvements in the 09-IIIB include shortening the distance between the inner and outer hulls, or even transitioning to a single hull.

Furthermore, we "know" (as far as we can know such things) that variants of the Type 09-IIIA reached Improved LA levels of noise (a specific value I heard mentioned is 110db at 10 yards). I expect the new class to significantly improve on this given the time it's spent in development and the technological advancements China has achieved in the interim.

The proof of the pudding will be in how many of this new type China builds. If it's a significant number, we can deduce that China has finally fielded a competitive SSN (like it fielded a competitive DDG in the 052D). If it's another one-off experiment, we can conclude that more needs to be done, or that China has concluded that the 09-III form is just irredeemably flawed and place our hopes on the 09-V.

Strategic platforms are where China is at the biggest disadvantage to US. Think nuclear arsenal, nuclear carriers, nuclear submarines and strategic bombers. 095 will not be the leader. It would however be China's first real quiet nuclear sub.

China was once nowhere in shipbuilding - I still remember debates where people claimed China would just churn out Type 22 coastal boats like it was an oversized Iran - and then the Type 052D happened, followed by the 055. Things change. Just because China was behind in these platforms doesn't mean that will always be the case; China can change established facts very quickly.

You yourself were impressed by a nuclear reactor China developed for a barge. Have some faith in what it can do today and how far its industry has come.

I'm not sure why semiconductor fab is mentioned here since CETC fabs would be well inland.

Why wouldn't the US target CETC facilities and cripple China's ability to produce new radars and other military electronics? That is a grievous vulnerability.

Which equipment in shipyard do you think China cannot repair in short time or bring over a replacement or move to another part of the shipyard?

I don't know what equipment an advanced shipyard uses besides the obvious, but I know it's neither cheap nor easy to obtain else China would have a lot more of them.

As long as China has large number of stealth aircraft and bombers and hypersonic anti-ship missiles, it will be able to keep US forces at a certain distance away. That limits the amount missiles that USAF/USN would be able to launch.

If what you believe about Chinese SSNs and ASW in general is true, then US submarines will always be able to slip through the net even if the surface, land, and air forces are entirely wiped out by China.

 

[Tempest]

Since you don't expect the USAF to do this, this is very much what they can plan to do. Better have something in place to stop such an operation than to leave it to 'chance'.

Well I don’t much anticipate the US Navy attempting to sink Taiwan before the PRC can claim it either. Some strategies are fundamentally sound, and are simply unexpected or dismissed in error; but others are just plain stupid. If the USAF wishes to build strike profiles in line with what the other user commented vis a vis massive, contested overflights of neutral and PRC territory, employing munitions on a delayed-effect target, and performing the whole overflight in reverse — then hey more power to ‘em. Good luck have fun, and I’m sure the civilians in Tibet will have lots of fun with the B-2 confetti that they’ll be seeing lots of.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Since you don't expect the USAF to do this, this is very much what they can plan to do. Better have something in place to stop such an operation than to leave it to 'chance'.

this is unexpected because it's a bad idea to risk high value strategic assets on remote and hardened delayed effect targets which requires overflight of vast hostile territories including a heavily militarized and watched international border.

 

[Mohsin77]

If the PLA fails catastrophically at the conventional level or the US launches a war before China is ready, and China suffers major losses to its industry (loss of a major shipyard, for example). I hold that China should then respond with tactical nuclear strikes against similar US targets because at that point it's already over..

What you are describing, is not a "tactical" nuclear strike.

By definition, it is a strategic nuclear strike.

Once you walk through that door, there are no U-turns and no half-measures.

So be very clear and careful about what you are actually proposing.

Because the retaliation from the US is going to be the same: strategic nuclear strikes.

 

[Coalescence]

Why would it be different to a conventional bomb? If someone loses their son to a tomahawk strike, is that any better than a tactical nuke? At least with the nuke it'll be instant. I think nuclear weapons have an unfair stigma because there is a concern it'll be used against entire cities. Used responsibly I think they are a very effective counter to America's bigger force.

Anyway if a war happened between America and China we'd probably see martial law and everything will be very tightly controlled. Both would shape public opinion to whatever they wanted.

Look at how things are now on both mainstream and social media with regards to Russia, and America isn't even at war.

Yes, it would not be different if they used a conventional or nuclear bomb. The point is that we can't expect a tic for tac response by destruction alone, there can be other factors that influence what kind of response they will take. Martial law may exacerbate the political problem, as the common folks livelihood and lifestyle would be disrupted, they may want the war to end as soon as possible through escalation or de-escalation.

They can try to shape the public opinion, but when the deaths start racking in and more of their properties get destroyed, it would be hard to contain the discontent, I think a good example of this phenomenon is the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war in US. When Moskva sunk, the Russian side of the social media were calling for a harsher response like bombing Kiev and were starting to see their government as weak for a moment, on the other hand when information about which Ukrainian soldiers being captured and killed "leaked" out, there were protest at the Ukrainian government office asking for death payment, information on their whereabouts and calls for ending the war. As the war continues, more of these events happen and would accumulate into a movement that would disrupt the stability and function of the society.

 

[luosifen]

this is unexpected because it's a bad idea to risk high value strategic assets on remote and hardened delayed effect targets which requires overflight of vast hostile territories including a heavily militarized and watched international border.

I wouldn't discount the idea of India providing the USA overflight permission if they got a good deal out of it, and I don't see how Myanmar has the capability to stop American overflights of stealth platforms given the state of their military. These vectors of attack would certainly be a less defended environment compared to the Chinese coastline where most of the PLA resources are placed.

 

[Blitzo]

Clearly a tactical nuclear missile shot at Huntington Ingalls because a gantry crane in Dalian got knocked over is not a serious proposition. However, there has to be some percentage whereby that level of damage is unacceptable. Clearly it's not 0% (i.e. any damage about nothing merits a nuclear response) or 100% (any damage below total is acceptable and won't trigger a response). Where that level exactly is, I don't know - but I sure hope the Chinese government knows. I'd like it to be close to 0%, but I'm not the one tasked with making that determination and I'm pretty glad I don't have that kind of responsibility.

Also, even though the Chinese government should have a clear idea about what level of damage or even intent (does a failed strike count as "damage"?) merits nuclear escalation, I don't think it should be public about it. There's a lot of deterrence value in that gray zone area you described; let the US sweat the ambiguity. I recall reading a story that some US official asked a Chinese counterpart if China would response with nuclear attacks if it suffered overwhelming conventional damage (I believe the destruction of the Three Gorges Dam and subsequent flooding was used as an example). The Chinese official responded with something like "try it and find out."

I'm not opposed to China using nuclear weapons (including tactical nuclear weapons) on a first use basis if it is in response to
For example, destruction of the three gorges dam would certainly present a fair reason for a counter-value strike.

That argument goes by the wayside when we consider that delivery systems are both cheap enough and accurate enough that tactical nuclear weapons can be delivered at intercontinental ranges successfully. In my basing concept, tactical and strategic nuclear weapons would be indistinguishable. It's not like you'd have regular DF-31AG TELs that would carry tactical nuclear weapons and Pro Max DF-31AG TELs that would carry strategic ones - the delivery systems would be indistinguishable. Similarly, the US would have no way of knowing that silos #35-42 and #79-103 have the tactical nukes and the rest have the strategic ones.

I never said that tactical nuclear weapons are unable to be delivered at intercontinental ranges. I said that China will not have tactical nuclear escalation parity or superiority due to long term peacetime geostrategic positioning.

Launching tactical nukes at intercontinental ranges is fine, but you will not be about to launch more tactical nukes to the enemy's homeland than the enemy can launch to your homeland by virtue of the forces that they will have in your periphery at the onset of a conflict due to greater availability and variety of launch platforms (ships, submarines, bombers, and carriers) and much cheaper and varying warhead delivery vehicles (cruise missiles, regional range IRBMs/HGVs, or freefall guided nuclear weapons, dependent on launch platform of course).
When all you have are ICBMs (which are also a valuable delivery vehicle for your strategic nuclear warheads that you have to preserve a large force of ICBMs for!), against the opfor's variety of tactical nuclear weapon types that the PLA faces, it is not in the PLA's interest to seek to be the first to use tactical nuclear weapons.

In fact, it is in the PLA's interest to actively avoid both sides venturing into the tactical nuclear weapon threshold given how much of a disadvantage it will be, due to the nature of geography and geostrategic positioning and availability and disparity of tactical nuke launch platforms and tactical nuke delivery vehicles.

This of course is ignoring the very real possibility that the US would respond with strategic nuclear exchange from the outset in which case both sides will lose. Both sides losing is not an issue necessarily if the PLA are facing guaranteed defeat, but risking strategic nuclear exchange if the PLA is well outside of that ballpark (or if the otherside has conducted a large scale conventional counter value strike like hitting the three gorges dam) is immensely illogical.

No matter what employment doctrine one considers, be it an aggressive one like mine or a completely reactive one, the problem of successfully delivering tactical nuclear weapons to the continental US has to be solved.

This further reinforces the point that the PLA needs to be able to rapidly and decisively degrade the forward positioned US forces to the point where they can't even mount a response with tactical nuclear weapons - what I called in a previous post "stomping every cockroach simultaneously." This is an enormously difficult problem, but it must be solved or we're in scenario 5 where a nuclear war gets kicked off without China firing first.

I see two possibilities in this regard

1. The PLA just has to get that damn good.
2. In addition to being able to threaten the continental US with comparable damage using tac-nukes, China must threaten US regional allies with employment of strategic nuclear weapons against them if their territory is used to do an unacceptable level of damage against China.

The second point is not an operational doctrine or military capability; it's political coercion, so it must be applied before a crisis kicks off and the US seizes total political control of its allies.

I'll put it simply.
I have no issue with China procuring a large force of tactical nuclear warheads.
I have no issue with China developing ICBMs intended to carry tactical nuclear warheads.

However I do not believe it is feasible or sensible for the PLA to pursue a "first use tactical nuclear" capability except in very exceptional circumstances (circumstances of which would likely warrant large scale strategic nuclear exchange to begin with), because China simply will not have tactical nuclear escalation parity or superiority into the foreseeable future, arguably even into the long term future.
I believe that for the PLA, it is actually in their interest to actively avoid ways in which a conflict could involve tactical nukes, because while the PLA may be able to reach near parity for strategic nuclear forces, tactical nuke employment is one where the PLA will remain at a considerable disadvantage in for many years and decades until such a point that the peacetime long term geostrategic positioning matter could be equalized.

 

[Tempest]

DC "Think Tanks" / Rand / Atlantic Council / Lockheed they all exist in the same echo chamber. They claim "an attack on an American carrier would warrant a retaliatory nuclear response" and at the same time "China's nuclear posturing is disastrous and stupid and a show of weakness". It's just more hypocrisy coming from the same fools.

To throw my hat in the ring as someone well acquainted with RAND and other similar think tanks, there isn’t much serious consideration within them of nuclear response to a Carrier’s destruction. Much of the literature published was exploratory, and was in the context of a much weaker China that couldn’t meaningfully respond to the escalation. I haven’t met a single soul who calls themself an SME on WESTPAC force employment and threat systems who would want to escalate to such a degree.